Researchers work to uncover a tree’s secrets
Genes could hold insight into future of bio-agriculture
The National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe is a ghostly quiet twostory building overlooking the Interstate 25 interchange at St. Francis Drive. The air inside feels sterile. Voices are quiet, if used at all, and the traffic noise outside is muted. Only the machines hum.
They are some of the world’s most sophisticated computers, crunching millions of strands of DNA into patterns of data. It’s information that can provide a map into what makes organisms function, form disease and heal.
Researchers hope it also might hold insight into the future of bio-agriculture, a farming method that uses no synthetic fertilizers or other agricultural chemicals. By studying data from the DNA of the red alder tree of the Pacific Northwest — a hardy, fastgrowing, efficient species with a variety of uses, including biofuel — they hope to one day develop a tool that will transform food and energy production and, ultimately, help slow global warming.
Unlike most plants, the red alder can thrive without the aid of nitrate fertilizer added to the soil. When its roots interact with a bacteria called Frankia, the tree is able to absorb and process nitrogen in the atmosphere more efficiently than most other types of vegetation. The red alder’s genome, researchers say, might help them alter the genetic makeup of other plants — reducing or even eliminating the nation’s reliance on nitrate fertilizer.
The nitrous oxide that escapes into the atmosphere from fertilizer is considered the third most potent greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide and methane. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found in a 2012 study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, that increased use of fertilizer over the last half-century — skyrocketing in the U.S. from 2 million tons in 1960 to 22 million tons in 2011 — has led to a 20 percent rise in atmospheric nitrous oxide.
The ambitious research is being funded by a biofuels project grant. Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation awarded the genome center in Santa Fe and the University of Oregon $1.8 million for a two-year study on the red alder tree and its applications for biofuel, which is increasingly being used in some countries to replace coal in energy production.
The goal of the study, said Callum Bell, with the National Center for Genome Resources, “is to understand the genetics of the plant … using that knowledge to make it into a better crop.”
Understanding the plant’s genome will allow researchers to determine the conditions in which it grows best and why, Bell said. This, in turn, could allow scientists to develop a species that’s more resistant to insects, pesticides and climate change — as researchers already have begun to do for other profitable plants, like corn and cotton.
This is not the first time genomics researchers have set a lofty goal.
The work of unraveling and documenting genetic code began at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1980s. The result was one of the world’s largest genomics banks, or GenBank, a public resource originally funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. It is tasked with sequencing large quantities of DNA — hundreds of millions of sequences — parts of which were used to study AIDS and find a way to cure the disease.
The red alder, originally thought of as a nuisance because of its ability to grow rapidly and crowd out other plant species — much like New Mexico’s Siberian elm — has become the most common tree in its native home in the Pacific Northwestern states of Oregon and Washington, and a lucrative, hardwood lumber crop.
The wood of the red alder is turned into everything from kitchen cabinets to facial tissues; its bark has been used to create dyes, as well as an extract that has been used as a painkiller, similar to aspirin, and a treatment for cholera.
“There are a bunch of uses” for the tree, Bell said, “and one of them is for wood biomass.”
The use of wood as a biofuel has spiked in recent years, doubling between 2012 and 2014, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A 2015 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that forest product exports had reached a record $9.7 billion, $820 million of which was biofuel sales to Europe.
In the first quarter of 2017, the biofuel industry produced 12 million tons of wood pellets annually at 90 facilities in the U.S., including two plants in New Mexico.
Incentive programs in Europe encourage energy companies to burn wood pellets instead of coal, with a goal of reducing carbon emissions and the impact of climate change. Burning wood pellets releases carbon dioxide at a lower level than burning coal, and the CO2 emitted is then reabsorbed by vegetation — such as new trees grown to replace those used to produce the biofuel.
Still, some critics question whether wood biofuel is actually as climatefriendly as it has been pegged by its advocates. Others worry it will encourage forest depletion.
Norman Lewis, the lead researcher from Oregon State University, said the red alder’s efficient growth patterns and ability to thrive in poor quality soil and harsh environments where little else will grow, could allow biofuel producers to develop a crop that won’t threaten other species, valuable agricultural lands or forests.
Demand for the tree for lumber and fuel has far exceeded its implication as an invasive species, he said.
“It’s a very important plant in Oregon and Washington state,” Lewis said. “What we are trying to do is understand why some of the clones [of the red alder] grow better and faster under some conditions than others.”
This might lie in the tree’s symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which helps it process airborne nitrogen.
“If every plant could do that, we wouldn’t need to use fertilizer in any form,” Lewis said.
He said the red alder’s DNA could be injected into other species, like a contagion or pollen dispersion, and help them develop the ability to extract nitrogen from the air and grow in even the poorest of conditions.
Lewis imagines that the tree’s genetics could one day help producers convert barren land into valuable parcels with rich soil where crops can grow in abundance.
“What humanity would like to do in the future is to have every plant species fix its own nitrogen and infect other species,” he said. “But that is a long-term goal … if every plant could take nitrogen out of plants and not soil.”
Contact Rebecca Moss at 505-986-3011.